Jeff Self Photography Blog

Rivalry game at Hickory on Tuesday night as the Hickory girls took the floor against their rival Great Bridge.

I used my Nikon Z9 body and Nikkor Z 85mm f/1.8 lens to shoot the action.

Hickory jumped out to an early lead, but Great Bridge started chipping away in the 3rd quarter. Great Bridge took over in the 4th quarter to grab the victory.

You can purchase images from the game on MaxPreps or my website.

It was senior night at Great Bridge on Wednesday night as the #2 ranked Wildcats hosted a tri-meet with Hickory and #1 ranked Grassfield. Grassfield cruised to an easy win over Hickory. I wasn’t able to get any images of this match. But I did shoot the match between Great Bridge and Hickory followed by the match between Great Bridge and Grassfield.

I brought my Nikon Z9 body and Nikkor Z 135mm f/1.8 S Plena lens. I love how the Plena lens renders the backgrounds, but sometimes the wrestlers definitely get too close for this lens.

It was a packed house at Hickory on Friday night as they took the floor against their rival Great Bridge. It was the first time that I’ve been shooting games at Hickory that they pulled out the bleachers on the other side of the court.

I used my Nikon Z9 body and Nikkor Z 135mm f/1.8 S Plena lens to shoot the action.

Hickory jumped out to a commanding lead, but Great Bridge started chipping away in the 3rd quarter. They cut the lead to 3 points with less than two minutes to play but they were unable to get any closer.

Happy New Year! I started off 2025 with a morning of photography. I went to Battlefield Park in Great Bridge and walked around a little. Nothing like blue skies to quell my photography enthusiasm! But I captured a few images there and then moved on to Stumpy Lake Natural Area to see if anything was happening there. It was dead too. A few birds off in the distance. But other than one Great Blue Heron that I grabbed a couple images of, it was not much of a success. Hope the rest of my photographic journey is better in 2025!

It was doubleheader night at Greenbrier Christian Academy as both the girls and boys took on Hickory High School. It was my first time in their gym and while it was a decent size gym with a food court upstairs that overlooked the floor, there was about six feet of space between the ends of the court and the walls. The good news with that is I could rest my back against the wall.

It was doubleheader night at Hickory High School as both the girls and boys hosted Norfolk Academy. The girls game was a very competitive game that Hickory looked like they had control of going into the fourth quarter. But Norfolk Academy got the momentum and dominated the fourth quarter to win.

The Hickory boys took a 20 point lead to halftime and looked to be in complete control of their game. But Norfolk Academy fought back in the second half and even took a 1 point lead with a couple of minutes to go before Hickory finally got control of the game and won.

On Saturday, December 7th, I got up early and took a cold drive down to Pea Island NWR on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It was 19°F when I left and my heat was not working too good in my Jeep. I definitely need to take that in and get it looked at! In fact, it was still about 26°F when I started crossing the Wright Memorial Bridge to get over to the Outer Banks. But once I crossed, it was 36°F on the island and my heat started pumping a little more hot air.

It was doubleheader night at Currituck County High School as both the girls and boys took on Hickory High School. The gym lighting had not been updated to LEDs so it was a bit of a throwback to the past. Both games were very competitive, which makes for better opportunities for shooting.

I brought my new telescopic stool but noticed that some of the pegs on it were already broke. It still worked mostly so my back was thankful. I brought my Nikon Z9 body and Nikkor Z 70-200 f/2.8 S lens. I hadn’t used this lens for basketball in a while, so I wanted to use it here. It’s the standard go to lens for basketball, but I think I still prefer a prime lens.

I started my high school basketball season off with a game between Southeastern District rivals Grassfield High and Deep Creek High. Sadly, I was going to have to shoot this game sitting on the floor since my telescoping stool got messed up from baseball season.

Grassfield controlled nearly all of the first half of this game but Deep Creek went on a row in the last minute to actually take the lead at halftime. Deep Creek then went on to dominate the second half.

I went out to Stumpy Lake Nature Area on Sunday morning to look for some birds to photograph. It’s been a bit slow this Fall. Actually, it’s been a bit slow for me since I’ve hardly done any bird photography. But the 40 days of no rain wasn’t helping either. Stumpy Lake was actually a puddle. But we did manage to finally get some rain last Friday. I brought along my Nikon Z9 and Nikkor Z 180-600mm f/5.6-6.3 VR lens.